“What kind of noise?” he asked, his patience unwavering.
It only made the frustration tighten in my chest. How was I supposed to begin? How could I explain the relentless echoes of the past, the way every sound felt like a trigger waiting to drag me under. I swallowed. “It’s like… like memories, constant and loud. Every sound, every movement takes me back there.”
“Back where?”
“The market,” I whispered. “There was chaos—screaming, and then, silence. So much silence.”
“The market,” Alex echoed, his tone careful, and I waited for him to ask more. Instead, hemoved on to another line of questioning. “That was your last deployment before you came home?”
I nodded, my fingers twisting in my lap. “Yeah. And I can’t get it out of my head. It’s always there… as if it’d just happened. I was managing it, but sometimes…” I thought I was getting better, pushing it down far enough that it wouldn’t take over. But no. It always found a way back, creeping in through the cracks, waiting for the moment I let my guard down. “Sometimes it just becomes too much.”
“Do you have an idea what triggered you today?”
I shrugged helplessly. “A smell, a…” My mind shut down. The air felt heavier. Charged. I stared forward, unblinking, slipping away into the past.
Laughter. We had been laughing. The air had been thick with the scents of grilled meat and spices, the bustle of the market familiar, comforting. My team had been beside me, talking, joking about stupid things—what we’d do when we got back, who owed whom a drink. And then?—
Chaos. Screaming. An explosion that split the world apart.
Then stillness.
I couldn’t save them. One moment, they werethere, alive, and the next, they were gone. The blood, the dust, the smell of burning—it was all still there, vivid and relentless—the pain.
Fuck.
The pain.
The gasoline, the fire.
My hands trembled as I reached out to help the ghosts of my friends—useless. Too late.
My throat tightened, my chest locking up as if someone had pressed a hand to my ribs and squeezed. The walls around me blurred, and then, they weren’t walls at all. They were sand-colored stone; the scent of burning filled my nose. The flames against my skin, burning, suffocating.
I had no control. My mind spiraled, pulling me deeper into the memory, my pulse hammering in my ears. My chest felt as if it was caving in, the air stolen from my lungs. I could still feel the heat, the pressure, the pain, the crushing weight of knowing I hadn’t saved them. Knowing I never could.
I was back in the market.
The blood was fresh, the dust thick in the air, sticking to my bloodied skin. My hands were empty. I was empty. They were gone, and I was still standing. I shouldn’t have been. The weight of that thought settled like lead in my stomach, draggingme under. Everything was cold—numb, distant—no air, no warmth, just the crushing weight of nothing. I couldn’t feel my hands, my legs, my own body. Just the past swallowing me whole.
“Tyler?” Alex’s voice was there, steady. “Can you come back, Tyler?”
I stiffened. I ached as sensation rushed back—pins and needles in my fingers, a dull pounding in my head. My breathing became shallow. Shame flooded through me, hot and suffocating. I struggled to remember where I was, my mind sluggish, fighting to catch up. The walls felt unreal, shifting around me. For a moment, I was afraid I’d never fully come back. I clenched my hands into fists.
Did I even want to come back?
“Tyler? Are you with me now? Can you tell me five things you can see?”
I forced my brain to work and refocused. “You,” I rasped. “My bed… my…” I squeezed my eyes shut. “The closet. My jacket. Four things.”
“What can you smell?”
I inhaled. “The coffee Marcus left. The laundry soap.” My voice was distant, muffled at first, as if I were hearing it through water. The scents felt distant too, as if I didn’t belong in this moment.
“What can you hear?”
I scrubbed at my face again. “I don’t know. I’m sorry.” I couldn’t hear anything except my heartbeat and the rushing in my ears, making it impossible to focus on the world around me.
“It’s okay,” Alex said. He waited, letting me come back at my own pace. “Would you want to talk to me?”
